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PULSE IN VERBAL RHYTHM. 



By MARY HALLOCK-GREENEWALT, 

PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



[Reprinted from Poet Loue, June, 1905.] 



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From The Jersey City News: 

"The sub-conscious tuning' of melody to the great scheme 
of Nature is a stupendous thought, and one which opens up a 
vast field for further research. Miss Mary Hallock's paper is 
enlightening and epoch making." 

From The Philadelphia Inquirer: 

Miss Hallock supports her theory with an argument which 
is both ingenious and plausible, and it is not surprising that 
her article on the subject should have attracted much atten- 
tion." 

From Music and Musicians: 

"Miss Hallock's 'Pulse and Rhythm' theory has met with 
instant interest, not only among musicians, but among medical 
men and phychologists as well. She has arranged the sub- 
stance of her researches into a Talk which she is including" in 
her season's engagements." 

article in the current n 
Rhythm." The matter i 
much to the author's g 

From the Literary Digest: 

"Mrs. Hallock's paper, printed first in Poet Lore, on 'Pulse 
in Verbal Rhythm," makes some interesting points in elabora- 
tion of the idea 'that inward beat not only suggests but inter- 
prets the outward externalization which furnishes the 
lution of 



riber of Poet Lor 
original and sug 
>wing reputation 



rbal riddle.' 
Prof. George L. Burr, Prof. Mcdh 



%l Hist., Cornell 



"I find your theory of 'Pulse in Verbal Rhythm' not only 
very plausible in itself, bur one which opens fascinating vistas 
of thought. I trust you will yourself follow it up with further 
research along the same line." 

From Mr. Charles G. D, Roberts (noted authority on the tech- 
nique of verse). 
"Your paper on 'Pulse in Verbal Rhythm' is a most val- 
uable and admirable piece of work, most rich in suggestion and 
sound, in my opinion." 

From Mrs. Florence Earle Coates: 

"Your paper on 'Pulse in Verbal Rhythm' is an original 
and valuable study." 



'rom Prof. Edward Dickinson, Prof, of the Histori 
Philosophy of Music, Oberlin College: 
"I have found your discussion very suggestive and 
sting, and it seems to me that you have cast light o 
ubtle problem of the source of the rhythmic instinct." 



From the Tacoma Daily News, Tacoma, Wash.: 

"Miss Hallock's lecture on Pulse and Rhythm in Verse 
and Music rests on a scholarly basis, but the technical side is 
so happily veiled in a grace of speech and charm of manner 
that the lecture becomes really popular in character, admir- 
ably calculated both to please and to entertain the average 
audience, whether music students or otherwise. Miss Hallock 
clearly understands the art of presenting her facts not only in 
logical form but attractively, and the task is easier on account 
of her own very attractive personality." 

From the Victoria Daily Colonist, Victoria, B. C: 

"Miss Hallock's lecture on 'Pulse and Rhythm' was replete 
with interest in every line, and touched so many points produc- 
tive of thought that the audience was in perfect accord with 
the speaker, and quite carried away." 

From the Victoria Daily Times, Victoria, B. C: 

"Miss Hallock, in addition to being a pianist, ranking 
among the best, is also a student of music in its highest sense. 
She has made a study of the science of music from every 
standpoint. 

"Her lecture last night proved most interesting and in- 
structive. It was illustrated by selections from the very best 
composers, which were played by her with a finish which de- 
lighted the audience." 



From The Tacoma Ledger, Tacoma, Wash.: 

"Miss Hallock's manner of speaking, her voice, and her 
intensity of purpose, make her extremely interesting to 
listen to." 

From The Lawrence Daily World, Lawrence, Kas.: 

"Miss Mary Hallock gave a lecture on 'Pulse and Rhythm 
in Verse and Music' last night at the University of Kansas^. 
The lecture showed much investigate 
thought as well as unusual cha 



Comments on her worK as Scientist and Lecturer. 



From .i/c i 'harh •.magnt Tower* V. 8. Ambassador Extraor- 
dinary ami Minister Plenipotentiary t<> Berlin: 
"1 congratulate you upon your presentation of this ex- 
tremely Interesting study." 

Excerpt from the tetter ../ Mr. J. /;. Meyer, Director ../ tin 

Dresdl n M USeum, Dri srft u : 

"A very suggestive and spirited paper." 

Excerpt 0/ letter from Mme. Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler: 

"Your article on Pulse and Rhythm was read with the 
greatcsl Interest. lour arguments appeal to me mosl strongly, 
and I hope you will have time t •• follow the subject up and 
give us Hi,- benefit of your investigations." 

Excerpt from letter of Dr. Benry Skinner. President of tin 
Entomological Society, Academy «/" Natural Sciences, 
Phila.: 
"Y ■ very Interesting and Instructive essay was duly re- 

c Ived, anil I desire in thank vim very much for it l read ii 

with pleasure ami profit, v™ did a I. a of research along the 

lu r entomology." 

From Dr. Solomon Solis-Cohen, Philadelphia: 

"li""' can one's wl nervous system, muscular system, 

organism fail to in- impressed by a life-long rhythm (pre-natal 
as well i s.i importa s the heart's? Think, to f the mean- 
ing, ilir exaltation of function regularly recurring with the 
advenl of new hi I. 

"V.s, you hav.. listened in Beethoven's heart beats from 
beyond the stars! Thanh you very much for your illuminating 
study." 

Excerpt from the letter of Edmund ('. Stedman: 

"Lei in.' assure you thai I find your thesis must suggestive 
an. I very Interesting. My instinct long has been that in our 
mosl i.i. -al movements ami cadences we an- subject in tin. 
whirl ..r the un iverse ami to the time beats of our own hearts, 
what I could a.i. i would no Hi.' SXpOTence 51 the natuTal 
iiiytiuiiist who had lain in bed lor months with his heart in- 
termitting, — skipping ih.. half of every third beal and the 
whoTe ot ih,' fourth. This being a perfectly rhythmic sequence, 
F found my verse keeping step with it. As Tennyson says, 'it 
beal time t.. nothing in my distraught brain.'" 

/•Yam Constat! tin Von Sternberg: 

■•'I'll.' service which von hftve rendered Art is not a super- 
ficial on,', Ian reaches down deep into its very fundaments, dis- 
closing there the Intimate touch of music with the very lit'.' 
pulse of humanity. STour work lias secured tor you a place 
anions; tti.' greatest servitors .,r an, a place embellished by a 
beautiful ami fervid Art Instinct which has evidently guided 
your Investigations ami aided you to recognize with the heart 
many things in which the mind alone might have .Tied. 

'NO SERIOUS MUSICIAN CAN AFFORD TO DISPENSE WITH THE 
KNOWLEDGE OFFERED IN YOUR VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION. AND NOT 
FOR YOUR BUT FOR ARTS SAKE I WISH THAT IT WOULD MAKE ITS WAY 
QUICKLY ALL OVER THE MUSICAL WORLD." 

From St. Louis Post-1 iispatch : 

NOTED PIANIST WHO REASONS THAT HEART BEATS 
AFFECT MUSIC RHYTHMS 
"Hundreds ol musicians are siiti discussing the unique 

lectur ' Mrs. .Mary Halloek-Greenewalt, given in Festival 

Hall ai the fair. Monday morning. Psing her fingers as well 
■ I - her brain m demonstrate her musical knowledge, she was 

Considered in her hearers a marvel of scientific ami novel 

ideas." 

Prom The Rochi rEi Po i Express, Rochester, x. v.: 

"Wii.H determines the tempo of compositions? Is it whim, 
caprice, the uninfluenced imagination, a pure act of volition on 
ii" pari .a til.- composer; or is the musician snb-conseiously 
guided i" some physical mentor'.' That is the difficult ques- 
tion Which WlSS llalloek. well known as a pianist and writer 

tes, has set herself to answer in the September 
number of the Popular Science Monthly. Old thinkers from 
the tlmi oi ii,, Greek philosophers to the physician Avlcenna, 



an. I Savonarola, the theologian, have dreamed thai there was 

s """' subtle ii.etion between musical rhythm ami the 

arterial pulsation. THAT IDEA MISS HALIOCK RAISES FROM THE 
LEVEL OF CONIECTURE TO THE HEIGHTS OF A HYPOTHESIS. SUPPORTED 
BY EXPERIMENT." 



lit, 



,\no Springs Gazette, Colorado Springs, Col.: 
"MISS HALLOCK IS A CONVINCING AND ENGAGING SPEAKER. 
AND IS EN RAPPORT WITH HER AUDIENCE AT ONCE. THE MUSICAL 
ILLUSTRATIONS WERE MAGNIFICENTLY RENDERED. ami all who 
heard Miss llalloek coul. l not hut believe that she had solved 
the subtle link between musical rhythm and the arterial pulsa- 
tion. The subject was charmingly illustrated in a variety of 
ways: a Barcarolle of Rubinstein ami Brahms Rhapsodie were 
executed with a rare delicacy of touch ami nicety of feeling. 
By special request Miss llalloek played Chopin's Nocturne in 
G major in so finished a manner as to evidence her complete 
mastery of the instrument. As she retired from the stage the 
audience showered upon her appreciative applause.-' 

From The Musical Leader, Chicago: 

"Miss Mary llalloek. of Philadelphia, has discovered the 
affiliation between Mean ami Brain, ami musical ami verbal 
rhythm. Her lecture given al St. Louis is described as unique, 
and ADrVIRABlY SUITEC FCR (H'ATEUR CUBS IN SEARCH OF SOME- 
THING NEW AND NICE IN UP-TO-DATE IDEAS." 

From the h.ui.v Herald, Carlisle,, Pa.: 

"Miss Hallock's interesting theory may he placed in the 
line of distinct scientific achievement, and consequent^ from a 

physiological ami psychological point of view is exlrenieh sug- 
gestive of possible modification in musical theory and 
aesthetics. That Miss Hal lock succeeded in holding the atten- 
tion of her audience throughout the exposition of her somewhat 
difficult subject, is conclusive proof, not only of the power and 

value of the theory anil of her effective and interesting pre- 
sentation of it. but as well of her own most charming per- 
sonality." 



Revi 



if Rev 
impose! 



of the pulse'.' M 

Monthly presents 

j.'Cl." 



s unconsciously guide. 1 by the beat 
io. llalloek in the Popular Scienet 
cresting facts bearing mi the suh- 



/''l' 



American Medicin 



"A new ami interesting dependence of the rhythms of hu- 
man and animal life upon the physiologic pulse has been 

suggested by Miss Mary E. llalloek. the Philadelphia pianist. 

.Music is an almost perfect illustration of the direct creative 

effoil of the human brain, and Miss II: k lias opened up a 

valuable field of study." 

From Medical News : 

"In the Popular Science Monthy for September. 1903, there 

is an article on 'Pulse i Rhythm,' by Maty llalloek. that is 

calculated to I I great Interest to physicians. 'I'll. whOll 

question is one of those highly interesting physiologico-psycho- 

logical problems that deserves to he studied more carefully 
than in the past, for it has within il the promise ot' int. 
relationships hitherto unsuspected." 



Der Tag, Berlin, Germany: 

In hi i paper on 'Pulse ami Phvilni 

some very interesting observations." 



II.. Noel; ha 



lei: Deutsche Hauspraubn-Zeituxg : 

"In 'Puis.- and Rhythm,' Miss Hallock i les to the 

probable conclusion that most rhythmic phen. 
trac. a back to the pulse beat" 

From The Chicago Tribunb: 

"MISS Marj llalloek. a ■ 

ill iel. 1" . 

musicians." 



[Reprinted from Poet Lore, June, 1905.] 



PULSE IN VERBAL RHYTHM. 

BY MARY HALLOCK-GREENEWALT 
PHILADELPHIA, PA. 

A GREAT poet and at the same time great musician has shown by 
scientific analysis that poetry is such things as music is made 
of. Accent, rhythm, tone-color, intensity, and pitch, all are present 
in spoken verse. Some of them, as every musician knows, can be 
measured by mathematical accuracy; some of them cannot. One 
species of accurate measure, far reaching in its meaning, escaped Mr. 
Lanier's attention. 

Simply, trenchantly, this poet, musician, scientist proved his 
points; the firmest lightest stroke settling once and for all the fact that 
verbal rhythm is bred of quantity, not born of accent. Regular time 
dimensions measured as by the clock stand at the root of verbal 
rhythm just as they are the life and breath of music. For why then 
should pauses within and without the lines be part and parcel of the 
rhythmic form? Accent cannot exist where sounds are not. Silence 
can supply nothing but time. This way he arrives at a signal truth, 
holding within itself the proof that the most exalted poetic workman- 
ship stands with its ' feet ' on a Mother Goose floor. All that we may 
say of the quantitive rhythm of a nursery rhyme will be found equally 
true of the iambics of Shakespeare's blank verse. 

In reciting 'Jack and Jill' then, or 'Mother Hubbard,' or 'Mary, 
Mary, Quite 'Contrary, ' the same amount of time measured as by the 
clock elapses between every pair of syllables pointed to as vital to the 
rhythm. Prosodists have not yet agreed as to what accent in verse 
really is. A syllable maybe raised above its fellows by .alliteration, 
intensity, tone-color, pitch, or any one of a dozen ways used similarly 
in music to bring out a note. 

In Jack and Jill no one will deny that these syllables are: 

Jack and Jill went up the hill 
To fetch a pail of water; 
Jack fell down and broke his crown 
And Jill came tumbling after. 



PULSE IN VERBAL RHYTHM 

No demonstration is needed to show that at discretion each unit of 
time between these accented syllables may be made faster or slower 
at will. 

In music this shifting of the tempo is the spice of interpretation. 
One who inclines his attention to the pianola has told me that change 
in the tempo lever alone made expression; whereas change in the 
intensity lever alone did not. At one moment we may feel like hum- 
ming a few bars of a Brahms Rhapsody at the rate of seventy-six beats 
to the minute, again at eighty and again at eighty-eight in whatever 
motion may best fill the mood of the moment. 

These time rates are mathematically gaugeable by an instrument 
in universal use among musicians called the metronome. And just as 
a portrait magnified to gigantic proportions destroys the likeness, just 
so are the time variations which can uphold the feeling and not distort 
the form confined in music to certain well defined limits. 

Strangely enough the quantities of verse sound natural only when 
uttered within these same circumscribed time rates. No elocutionist 
will deny that different interpretations require a varying energy of 
word emission. Or that to linger over a verse of sentiment is as 
natural as to pass quickly over the words of an energetic and angry 
dismissal. Because a metronome is not in more universal use the 
second hand of a watch or clock will be made to answer every purpose 
of illustration. 

Recited at a 'second' rate Jack and Jill will be found an old friend, 
possible and natural. With this rate doubled, however, with two 
quantities occupying the time space of one before an objection at once 
appears. Only the more or less nimble tongue can voice the syllables 
so fast. A little faster and the speed strikes the reciter dumb. A 
syllable is a tone. As a syllable-making implement the tongue is the 
least nimble of musical instruments. Whereas in pianism the necessity 
is not unusual for playing fourteen to sixteen notes a second, the 
utmost that a tongue can do in that line, and that for only a minute, 
is to reach eight syllables in the same time. 

Clearly time is necessary to verse. Too much of it is disastrous. 
Uttered at the rate of fifty quantities a minute an impossible drone 
meets the ear. One hundred and twenty quantities a minute, whether 
the quantity be composed of three or four syllables, is unnaturally fast; 
so that, roughly speaking, the limit of speed at which verbal quantities 
are possible stands at a time rate of between sixty and one hundred 
beats to the minute. Just this is true of musical rhythms. Just this 
scope of beat confronts the physician when he feels the normal pulse. 

Some statements of the oldest reporter of the Senate (See 'Dr. 



MARY HALLOCK-GREENEWALT 3 

North and His Friends,' by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell) confirm this testi- 
mony of a time measuring instrument. He says: 

'Speech at the rate of three syllables a second is slow; below that 
number wearisome to listen to. The fastest talkers in the Senate 
reach a speed of four and a half syllables a second. For a single 
minute, uneducated Irish women and negroes excited on the witness 
stand can reach a speed of eight syllables a second. ' 

Slower than one quantity, three syllables or their value a second, 
verse is wearisome to listen to; in double quick time, unusual and 
rare, if not impossible, a rate of beat synchronous with the heart's 
considered in its cycle of daily unpathologic variation. 

The comparison is fraught with meaning. The idea that inward 
beat not only suggests but interprets the outward externalization 
furnishes the one possible solution to many a verbal riddle. 

To that most practical of rhythmists, the pianist, it is one of the 
great mysteries of the world how the written words of a verse quite by 
themselves suggest orderly rhythm to the reader. What is it in Jack 
and Jill which makes the word 'water' suddenly demand the time 
taken by four syllables before? In asking for a glass of water the 
word is certainly more concisely uttered, even if in certain parts of the 
country it were not pronounced ' watter. ' 'After ' in the fourth line is 
different in length from 'after' in 'After the Ball.' 

Take also the following primitive verse from Gummere's 'The 
Beginnings of Poetry,' more useful than pretty in this connection. 
How from the punctuation can the quantities be determined as the bar 
lines undoubtedly indicate them? 

Nine are washing the | lye 

Nine. | 

Nine are washing it, | 

Nine are rubbing it, | 

Pretty Marion | in the shade, | 

Pretty Marion, | 

Let us to the | fountain go. | 

By what verbal logic does the preposition ' in ' receive an accent in 
the fifth line? Does anything in the page mark the spot where illog- 
ical accent marks the rhythmic limits? And, generally speaking, 
what denotes the place where change from iambus to anapest fugitively 
occurs ? So practical as the musician the poet has not been. 

Rhythm is time bounded regularly. In the insect's call it is the 
fall of the chirp, chirp, chirp which measures off the time; in poetry 
and music it is the regularly recurring accent. 



4 PULSE IN VERBAL RHYTHM 

Sometimes the divisions of time are quite unornamented. Such a 
rhythm is that of the Long Meter Doxology, the simplest rhythm, the 
rhythm of the insect's chirp. Sometimes there is the slightest possible 
tracery within the dimensions. 

The introductory note which ushers in the beat of a guinea hen's 
cackle marks this bird as a master of the iambic form: 

cack le, cack le, cack le. 

From this rhythm to the traceries within traceries of a Chopin noc- 
turne is a long step indeed. 

Music developed these rhythmic possibilities because the musician 
began by accounting for every fragment of time within his spaces, by 
symbols invented for this orderly purpose. The poet failed to do this 
and the omission dug a grave for poetic rhythm. In the travail of 
workmanship the ryhthmic light has paled and faded and all but died. 
The poet lives only because pulse beating within other organisms has 
marked for them his order. The suggestion may do something to 
clear the mystery surrounding the quantitive rhythm of old Latin and 
Greek prose. A tradition which never could have died had literature 
been wise and learned from music. 

Physiologically speaking, imagine the heart of the living world laid 
bare. Keep in mind the ' exaltation of function ' it throws regularly 
into every one of its parts, and this on an average of seventy-six times 
a minute. Conceive if you can the force with which it pumps a circuit 
of life through the butterfly, through the panther, so fast, so steadily 
as seconds are ticked by the clock. See how recurrently it buffets the 
brain. Is it strange if with such rigorous instruction the heart should 
have taught the head regular recurrence ? 

Not only this. Pygmy passageways simultaneously check the flow 
of blood from the heart, rudely distending the arterial walls at the 
capillary juncture. Is it inconceivable that this inhibited energy 
jostles the nerves to suggesting compensating action? Restricted 
freedom here also tortures the body forward; in this case to poetry, to 
music and the dance. The mother rocks her infant because regular 
motion is required by her own organism, not the child's. We are 
rhythmic because the physical man demands it. 

But the heart buffets the nervous system with double blows. It 
says, here is one for you for contraction, here is one for you for ex- 
pansion. Does the poet deal it out similarly to the world? In answer 
one has but to paraphrase that 'with a lub dub, lub dub, lub dub, 
every long poem and nearly every important short poem in the 



MARY HALLOCK-GREENEWALT 5 

English language is written. ' For what is a lub dub beat but a 3/8 
rhythm with the middle 1/8 left out? 

'As I wandered weak and weary.' 

' How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! ' 

The examples could be multiplied indefinitely. 

Between the two sounds of the heart a little less than a third of a 
second, one-third of the whole heart beat or thereabouts passes. The 
iambus enters in and out, just so, as rhythms go, by the clock. 

As to the extent of 3/8 rhythms listen to what Mr. Lanier has to 
say: 

' I think no circumstance in the history of aesthetics is so curious 
as the overpowering passion for 3-rhythms as opposed to 4-rhythms. 
From the beginning of English poetry with the ' Song of The Travel- 
ler,' which we may perhaps refer to the sixth century, or, speaking 
within the more certain bounds of poetic history, from our father 
Csedmon, — through all the wonderful list down to the present day, 
every long poem and nearly every short poem in the English language 
has been written in some form of 3-rhythm. ' 

A German writer compiles a table of the world's poetry, draws a 
hunger curve and a thirst curve, and asks why there is so much poetry 
that deals with drinking and so little that deals with eating. The 
former is the more spiritual, to be sure, but the stimulus increases the 
force of the heart's action and makes more insistent the recurrent will. 
1 Out of the mouth the heart speaketh ' in no metaphoric sense. 

The ancients proved that there was no time in poetry in the usual 
fallacy fashion. They said, time must be either past, present or future. 
Admittedly neither past nor future time is. Present time may be 
either divisible or indivisible, against both of which there are objec- 
tions. Therefore neither in the broad nor narrow sense is there time. 
They lost sight of one fact. The time of verse is remeasured, reman- 
ufactured at every new reciting. Memory welds the parts into a 
cohesive picture. Is this time portioned out similarly by different 
people in different lands at different times ? Clearly so. The French- 
man' s verse is not impossible of utterance to the German, neither is 
the Swede debarred from the English poem. A weary drone is neces- 
sary for none. As a matter of fact the heart of the entire animal world 
beats within similar limits.* From the salamander to man and thence 



* De la Propulsion du Sang Considered dans la Serie Animale. Bull, de l'Acad. 
de Med., 1840, Vol. V, p. 442, par. M. Dubois (d' Amiens). 



6 PULSE IN VERBAL RHYTHM 

to the butterfly the heart is uniform in its throb variations. One 
perfect communal feeling, one perfect communal sensation. Is it not 
communal action which has been held to be at the root of our sense of 
rhythm?* In the study of history on this field of battle two factions 
have pitched their tents. One army says, the superior individual 
arises, the mass, the clan, the tribe imitates and so a people progresses. 
The other holds that there is a common soul within the clan, that the 
products from the sum of the experiences of many cannot be explained 
by products of the individual's mind. So far as communal rhythm is 
concerned, imitation by each individual of the beat he feels within 
would create a spontaneous generation of rhythmic expression in the 
mass, on account of the similarity in the beat which, being the closest 
to them, all could not help but imitate. Variations in this beat are 
constantly present. Here also, ' Of the soul the body from doth take. ' 
Happiness, exhilaration, weariness, all raise and lower the cardiac 
rhythm. By the brain unaided these differences (thirty beats more or 
less per minute) can rather be felt than measured. 

There is a species of worm whose body is a lantern. Having feel- 
ing, having will, it glows rhythmically, and within the time rate of the 
general zoological pulse, as modified by exhilaration and lowered by 
repose. Let not the humblest poet despair. Some glow-worm afar 
celebrates his every measure with a gleam of fire. 

* The Beginnings of Poetry — Gummere. 






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